Former world champion Joe Johnson felt referee Marcel Eckardt could have prevented the stalemate that occurred in an extraordinary frame between Mark Allen and Wu Yize in their World Snooker Championship semi-final. The 14th frame of the match lasted 100 minutes and 21 seconds – the longest in Crucible history – and included 55 minutes without a ball being potted, because the black was over a pocket and eight reds were surrounding it.
Eventually, referee Eckardt warned the players that they had three shots each to progress the situation or a re-rack would be called. As it happened, any restarted frame couldn’t then take place because the second session had run out of time. Allen, who was 34 points ahead in the frame and clearly unhappy with the situation, fouled and nudged the black in soon after. Wu eventually took the frame to level the marathon best-of-33 contest at 7-7.
Soon after the drama had taken place, Johnson – winner of the world title in 1986 and now a TNT Sports commentator – told Express Sport: “I thought the referee might have stopped it or given the warning that you’ve got so many shots well before he did, because it was going nowhere and everybody could see that.
“The thing is, that kind of thing happens quite a bit. But it doesn’t normally go on for an hour. It’s incredible. Even the crowd got involved with shouting out, and you can’t blame them for that.
“And of course Mark Allen had a decent lead at the time. If you’ve got a good lead, why would you want it to end? You wouldn’t be happy, would you?
“It’s down to the referee at the end of the day. It’s a hard job out there. It’s in front of millions of people. He doesn’t want to look like a fool.
“It’s a hard decision to call. But I think he (Eckardt) could have made the decision a bit earlier.”
Fellow great Stephen Hendry was commentating on the match for the BBC and said it was “the dark side of snooker”.
However, the World Snooker Tour ruled out making changes around re-racks and said it felt that on this occasion “the rule was applied correctly” by the referee.
The last two sessions of the match between Allen and Wu takes place on Saturday, with both players aiming for their first appearance in a world final.